Tanaka Ōhide

Tanaka Ōhide (田中 大秀) (1777-1847 ) was a Japanese antiquary, folklorist, lexicographer, ethnographer, and scholar of the nationalist kokugaku movement. He is best known for his commentary on the Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter).

Biography

Tanaka Ōhide was born in Takayama, Hida Province in 1777.

At the age of 21, he went to Atsuta in Owari, where he began to study waka poetry and kokugaku philosophy. He studied in the Atsuta Shrine under the supervision of the Shinto priest Awata Tomokane. From 1801, Ōhide also began to attend Norinaga's lectures and became one of his students. In 1804, after Norinaga's death, he took up the study of his posthumous legacy, living for several months at his house in Matsusaka. Using medieval gazetteers, Ōhide identified the locations of many rural cemeteries that had been forgotten and fallen into disrepair. He oversaw repairs and reconstruction work on a number of these cemeteries. He also installed a memorial stele at the , where the ancient hero Yamato Takeru was said to have washed his eyes.

Ōhide had a lifelong admiration for Mount Kurai, and in his later years wrote a number of poems about it.

Selected works

Taketori Monogatari, The Commentary on the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, 『竹取翁物語解』 Ochikubo Monogatari, The Commentary on the Tale of Ochikubo, 『落窪物語解』 Tosa Nikki, The Commentary on the Tosa Diary, 『土佐日記解』

In culture

Tanaka Ōhide is mentioned in Before the Dawn, the most famous historical novel of Tōson Shimazaki.